MSU's Tom Izzo wants 2027 in Detroit to be 'greatest Final Four ever'

Tom Izzo brought his Michigan State basketball team to downtown Detroit a day early for its game against Oakland, spreading some holiday cheer while giving away toys to kids in the city before practicing at Little Caesars Arena.

It also marked a chance for Izzo to reminisce about his memorable trip to the Final Four in 2009 and for Michigan State University to get a head start to tipping off the return of college basketball’s marquee event to Ford Field in a little less than 16 months.

Izzo and athletic director J Batt took part in the unveiling of the logo for the 2027 Final Four on Friday, Dec. 19, at Ford Field. MSU is the host institution, which was announced in November 2022 and enters the home stretch for planning.

“I hope we spend a year to trying to get this to be the greatest Final Four ever,” Izzo said Friday. “And if Michigan and Michigan State can find their way in it, that would be great. If they can’t, I’m still gonna be a big-time supporter for what you’ve done to bring basketball to our great city.”

Final Four games will be played April 3 and 5, 2027, but it will be a weeklong celebration of basketball in the Motor City. Mayor Mike Duggan, a U-M graduate whose alma mater is 10-0 and ranked No. 1 in this week’s USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, floated the idea of the two in-state powers making during his speech on the dais. Izzo took it even further.

“I’d sign up for that tomorrow. That’d be the greatest,” said Izzo, whose team is No. 9 in the country and 10-1 in his 31st season. “You wanna throw Oakland in there? They were in the Sweet 16 a couple years ago – that would be fine with me. And if we could find another, maybe we’ll bring Northern Michigan into Division I and we’ll bring us all here.”

Izzo’s 2009 team won the Big Ten title by four games that season then embarked on a purpose-driven journey to get to Ford Field by knocking off Kansas and Louisville in Indianapolis to get him to his fifth of eight Final Four appearances.

“We were playing not just for Michigan State that weekend, we were playing for the state of Michigan,” Izzo said. “That’s when the economy and the auto industry and everything went down.”

In Detroit, after days of euphoric celebration downtown around the Final Four, the Spartans knocked off Connecticut in the semifinal before falling to No. 1 seed North Carolina for the national championship, Izzo’s only other title-game appearance outside of his 2000 crown. Izzo recalled that while celebrating MSU's win over UConn in the locker room with his team and Magic Johnson, Steve Mariucci and others, someone said the streets outside Ford Field were “just crazy, good crazy not bad crazy” from the thrilling win.

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“I said if I had any courage, I’d take my team out there,” Izzo said. “At that time, we had to stay up in Troy – there weren’t the same amount of hotels (downtown), and we were kind of away from it. And Magic said, ‘Let’s do it, coach, let’s do it!’

“I said, ‘Yeah, if I lose Monday night, everybody will be mad at me.’ So I didn’t do it.”

MSU faces Oakland on Saturday at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit (noon/Big Ten Network). Izzo has two players from that team currently helping this year’s team, with Goran Suton joining the coaching staff as a graduate assistant over the summer and Raymar Morgan volunteering as a student assistant after recently returning to East Lansing.

The Spartans also played the first basketball game with a court in the middle of a football stadium when they hosted Kentucky for the “Basketbowl” in November 2003. The brainchild of that event, former MSU athletic director Mark Hollis, watched from the back of Friday’s news conference. He is now the chief operating officer for Rock Entertainment Group and was chair of the Detroit Sports Operating Corporation that helped bring back the Final Four.

While touting the success in hosting the 2024 NFL Draft that thrust Detroit into the spotlight for hosting major events, Duggan recalled a 2018 attempt city officials made to bring another Final Four back but failed.

“Our chief presenter was a young man by the name of Cassius Winston, who was still playing at Michigan State. He did a tremendous presentation,” Duggan said of the Detroit native. “So the persistence of the Michigan State team helped push across the finish line.”

Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president for basketball, said he was impressed by the city’s massive turnout for the NFL draft.

“It was a big part of the sports commission’s pitch to the men’s basketball committee,” Gavitt said. “The fact it was such a successful event for arguably the most important sports property in our country, the NFL, and to be able to pull that off without any issues and indeed to have it be celebrated so globally as a successful event for the city and for the NFL gave the committee great confidence that if they can do that, they can more than do a successful Final Four again.”

Also in the crowd was David Barrett, the composer of “One Shining Moment,” a song that he wrote at a bar in East Lansing. Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of his song making its debut as part of the CBS NCAA tournament TV coverage that has become a staple of March Madness.

Izzo also reflected on how Mateen Cleaves used that song as motivation during his time at MSU, which culminated with an Elite Eight win over Iowa State at the Palace of Auburn Hills that led to Izzo and the Spartans winning it all in 2000.

“To compete for a national championship is the ultimate prize for a student-athlete,” said Batt, who won a national title as a goalkeeper with UNC’s soccer team in 2001. “So this event here in Detroit will be tremendously impactful for student-athletes that have the opportunity to compete. There’s no greater feeling than winning an NCAA championship.”

Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MSU's Tom Izzo wants 2027 in Detroit to be 'greatest Final Four ever'